60 MINUTES - NEWSMAKERS: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on U.S. microchip production, blocking of sales to China, Russia

[Daniel Nenni]

What does the secretary of commerce do? Until now, mainly promote U.S. businesses abroad. It had not been a high-profile job til Gina Raimondo turned the second-tier agency into a center of job creation, manufacturing, and national security.

Once the governor of Rhode Island, Raimondo, at 52, seems to have come out of nowhere to become a rising star of the Democratic party, and of the Biden administration.

As commerce secretary, she's running new projects that could touch the lives of every American, and she's helping lead the expanding Cold War with China and confront Russia's aggression in Ukraine. The battlefield for both those conflicts is technology.

Gina Raimondo: If you think about national security today in 2024, it's not just tanks and missiles; it's technology. It's semiconductors. It's AI. It's drones. And the Commerce Department is at the red-hot center of technology.

And at the red-hot center: a global "chip war" that ramped up, says Gina Raimondo, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Gina Raimondo: The Commerce Department stopped all semiconductor chips from being sold to Russia. Every drone, every missile, every tank has semiconductors in them. And, you know Lesley, you know we are being effective because shortly after we started that work we heard stories of the Russians taking semiconductors out of refrigerators, out of dishwashers--

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on U.S. microchip production, blocking of sales to China, Russia

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo is focused on U.S. advanced microchip production — and keeping the chips out of China and Russia.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[Barnsley]

Just attended an EU Seminar on their policy with respect to sanctions and such like. It was essentially 8hrs of stop exporting to Russia, China not as high on agenda as it was for the US version. The EU played nice for a while and watched countries circumvent the sanctions , now it look like they going to bring the hammer , they have the figures to show and they gonna show them.

 

[soAsian]

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo: The 60 Minutes Interview

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo is focused on U.S. advanced microchip production — and keeping the chips out of China and Russia.

www.cbsnews.com

I love Lesley Sthal's response when Rainmondo says, "we have the most sophisticated semis", "you mean Taiwan".

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Gina Rainmondo is very smart and a quick learner, but she is a hardcore politician. I remember helping an AP reporter with an article when Russia invaded Ukraine. He gave me semiconductor part numbers of chips they found in Russian weapons. Most were older PLDs and FPGAs but there were some CPUs and other rad hard stuff. He asked me if they can get these chips from commercial appliances and I said possibly but it is much easier to get them from the black market in Asia. He went with the appliance story because I guess that is what gets clicks. Breast pumps is a new one though.

As far as the China restrictions? It's like playing whack-a-mole with thousands of very smart moles. She knows this of course but it gets the US Department of Commerce funding for expansion and that is a big part of her job, absolutely.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

US is reviewing risks of China's use of RISC-V chip technology

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China's work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers. RISC-V, pronounced "risk five," competes with proprietary technology from British semiconductor and software...

www.yahoo.com

 

[soAsian]

US is reviewing risks of China's use of RISC-V chip technology

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China's work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers. RISC-V, pronounced "risk five," competes with proprietary technology from British semiconductor and software...

www.yahoo.com

how US going to enforce anything on RISC-V when its headquarter is at Switzerland and open source?

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[Daniel Nenni]

how US going to enforce anything on RISC-V when its headquarter is at Switzerland and open source?

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I noticed at the recent RISC-V events the contributed papers are from around the world so this is not a politically controllable technology. In fact, the papers out of China and India were some of the best.

But the US Commerce Dept has to justify their existence and funding so they will probably pretend to try.

 

[Paul2]

As far as the China restrictions? It's like playing whack-a-mole with thousands of very smart moles.

US+TW+DE export ban = a sure destruction of electronics industry in China. High end FPGAs, and CPLDs are one thing, but you cannot make even a radio doorbell without most dumb stuff: power, passives, discretes. PCB materials

If USA government really wanted to economically nuke China, it could've done so long ago.

China's electronics industry is super giant, but... they can't make their own MLCCs in sufficient quantity, and quality, and all the production equipment is US+TW+JP. And the know how is only in the heads of a few 60 years olds in the whole world.

 

[Paul2]

Gina Rainmondo is very smart and a quick learner, but she is a hardcore politician.

She is a socialite no question. The position she occupies really requires a specialist career civil servant who studied all that international trade, and etc.

It was my surprise to learn that the sanctions office in the commerce department is tiny, and is staffed with junior staffers who come and go.

I do not preclude the possibility she really learns most about that stuff from newspapers, and this is why we see "whack-a-mole" instead of taking out a few key supplies which will shut down half of the industry overnight (tip: superpure fluorocarbon gasses for dry etch, methacrylate resists, and NMP).

 

[samwilde]

Gina Rainmondo is very smart and a quick learner, but she is a hardcore politician. I remember helping an AP reporter with an article when Russia invaded Ukraine. He gave me semiconductor part numbers of chips they found in Russian weapons. Most were older PLDs and FPGAs but there were some CPUs and other rad hard stuff. He asked me if they can get these chips from commercial appliances and I said possibly but it is much easier to get them from the black market in Asia. He went with the appliance story because I guess that is what gets clicks. Breast pumps is a new one though.

It is ridiculous how the politicians (not just Gina) continue spouting such bullshit.
You can purchase most electronics off online sites with little oversight and the chips are small. They can easily be smuggled if necessary.
The Russians have the capability to manufacture chips up to 90nm. The Russians also will typically not use a Western chip in a military system if it does not have a Russian clone available. They have clone chips for older Western PLDs, FPGAs, CPUs, DSPs, etc. They use Western bought chips to cut costs, but if the supply was cut they would switch to their own production.

As far as the China restrictions? It's like playing whack-a-mole with thousands of very smart moles. She knows this of course but it gets the US Department of Commerce funding for expansion and that is a big part of her job, absolutely.

If is extremely hard, if not impossible, to block the supply of chips to Russia if the chips are commonly available off the shelf.

US+TW+DE export ban = a sure destruction of electronics industry in China. High end FPGAs, and CPLDs are one thing, but you cannot make even a radio doorbell without most dumb stuff: power, passives, discretes. PCB materials

The Chinese make all those things. Much like what happened with Huawei, it would take a year or two for them to redesign all their circuit boards to use Chinese chips and then they would continue making the products. The Chinese are also the major source for PCBs and related materials. With the exception of some very high end PCBs which are still made in places like Taiwan nearly all PCBs you see come from China.
While there are ways of putting a wrench on Chinese electronics production, they control the market for refining several critical materials, and this could be used by them.

If USA government really wanted to economically nuke China, it could've done so long ago.

China's electronics industry is super giant, but... they can't make their own MLCCs in sufficient quantity, and quality, and all the production equipment is US+TW+JP. And the know how is only in the heads of a few 60 years olds in the whole world.

The Chinese also produce MLCCs. If the sales to China were cut they would just eventually ramp up their own production. Much like several former Huawei suppliers have been finding out.